Hasty Pudding Versus Tasty Bread

Hasty pudding versus tasty bread: regional variations in diet and nutrition1 during the Industrial Revolution Sara Horrell and Deborah Oxley Abstract Using parish-level information from Sir F.M. Eden’s The state of the poor (1797) we can identify typical diets for the counties of England. These diets varied considerably and afforded very different standards of nutrition. We compute a nutritional score for this diet, paying attention to the presence of vitamins, minerals and micro- nutrients shown to be essential for health and growth in constructing this measure. Other information in the reports allows us to relate county-level nutrition to factors in the local economy. In particular we find nutrition was positively related to the availability of common land in the area and to women’s remunerated work if conducted from home. Lack of common land and little local supply of dairy products also pushed households into buying white wheaten bread rather than baking their own wholemeal loaf. Replicating some of this analysis with household-level data confirms these results. Diet also maps onto stature: male convicts to Australia were significantly taller if they originated in a county with a more nutritious diet. This verifies the important impact of nutrition on stature and demonstrates the sensitivity of height as a measure of key aspects of welfare. Introduction Sir Frederic Morton Eden’s detailed study published as The state of the poor in 1795 highlighted regional differences in diet amongst the working class and extolled the virtues for domestic economy of the northern diet of oatmeal bread and ‘hasty pudding’ compared with the expensive fare of wheaten bread commonly eaten in the south.2 These observations have been used, amongst other things, to construct typical consumption bundles in north and south for the creation of cost-of-living indices, and to compute the calorific content of the typical labourer’s diet for comparisons with workhouse dietaries and over time.3 This latter analysis has demonstrated the superior nutritional content of 1 We would like to thank participants at the Local Population Studies Annual Conference in April 2010 where an earlier version of this article was presented, Bernard Harris and Ian Gazeley for their helpful comments and the Australian Research Council for funding the collection of the convict data through grant numbers F79700658, A79702683 and DP0211257. 2 F.M. Eden (Sir), The state of the poor. A history of the labouring classes of England. Volumes I–III (1797). 3 N.F.R. Crafts, ‘English workers’ real wages during the Industrial Revolution: some remaining problems’, Journal of Economic History, 45 (1985), 139–44; P. Lindert and J.G. Williamson, ‘English workers’ living standards during the Industrial Revolution: a new look’, Economic History Review, 36 (1983), 125; C. Shammas, ‘The eighteenth century English diet and economic change’, Explorations in Economic History, 21 (1984), 254–69. 9 Sara Horrell and Deborah Oxley the northern diet, which was some 23 per cent higher in calories than that of the south.4 Here we revisit the information provided by Eden to obtain a more detailed regional breakdown of the differences in diet across the nation, explore the nutritional value of these diets, examine the determinants of the diet chosen and see if the different nutrition afforded can be observed in output measures, such as height. In his three volumes on The state of the poor, Eden provided a detailed account of the history of the labouring classes from the Norman Conquest to the present, and collected and presented information on 156 parishes in 42 counties around England and Wales on local agriculture and manufacturing opportunities, wages paid, prices paid for provisions and workhouse financing and dietaries. He used this information to make detailed observations on the domestic economy of the labouring classes with respect to diet, dress, fuel and habitation as well as a commentary on schemes for relief of the poor, the most effective administration of workhouses and the state of Friendly Societies. In addition he collected 42 household budgets detailing the income and expenditure of working families and furnished information on a further 66 rural labourers’ households in an appendix. Here, first, the parish level information and, second, the household budgets are utilised to explore regional diet and nutrition. The 156 parishes represented not only most counties but also a variety of locations from rural hamlets to market towns, such as Leighton Buzzard, Chesterfield, Kettering, Norwich, Lichfield, Kendal and Buckingham, larger urban areas such as Chester, Carlisle, Derby, Newcastle, Nottingham, Manchester, Birmingham, Halifax, Leeds, Wolverhampton and Preston, and ports, such as Portsmouth, Liverpool, Bristol, Hull and Southampton. The metropolis is under-represented but otherwise the survey captures examples of conditions throughout the country. For each of the parishes we extracted information on whether the parish was urban or rural; the type of agriculture, if any; size of farms, crops grown, and rent; availability of common land; manufacturing employments available; work of women and children; typical wages paid; the price of provisions, ranging from bread and grains through dairy and meat to potatoes and coals; any detail on labourers’ diets; and information on the number of poor and workhouse dietaries. Not all parishes provided full information so the data collected was collated to provide a picture of the position in each county, noting whether the information had come from rural and/or urban parishes or ports within the county. Eden declaimed the typical diet of the poor in the south of the country, citing it as costly, particularly with the tremendously high wheat prices evident at the time he was writing, and extolling the virtues of the cheaper ‘hasty pudding’ eaten in the north. His focus was 4 This is calculated from information in the household budgets of both Eden, State of the poor, and D. Davies, The case of labourers in husbandry (London, 1795). The calorific content was 2,823 in the north and 2,109 in the south. 10 Hasty pudding versus tasty bread more on cost than nutrition, but nutrition was often better too. His view was that the worker demonstrated poor, ‘injudicious and wasteful’ domestic economy, wages did not afford the essentials because ‘either through ignorance, custom, or prejudice, he [the worker] adheres to ancient improvident systems in dress, in diet, and in other branches of private expenditure’.5 His remit was to show how expenditure could be reduced and thus make wages sufficient ‘by suggesting and explaining the mode of preparing cheap and agreeable substitutes for those articles of diet, which, in times of scarcity and distress, exhaust so much of the daily earnings of a working man’.6 He noted the differences in diet in north and south and criticised the southerner for his almost exclusive reliance on bread and cheese, the drinking of tea and, when meat could be afforded, the wastefulness of roasting it rather than boiling it and turning it into a soup. In the north there was more variety of diet and he detailed the particulars of making some items. Hasty-pudding headed the list. Hasty pudding was a form of porridge made of oatmeal boiled for a few minutes with water and salt. It was eaten with either a little milk and beer poured on or a little butter or treacle put in the middle. ‘This dish is extremely nutritious, and is much liked by those who have been accustomed to it’.7 Crowdie was eaten by northern miners and was similar to hasty pudding but could be made by using boiling broth stirred into the oatmeal rather than water and using the fat from the broth rather than butter to melt in the centre. Frumenty, or barley milk, was dehusked barley boiled for two hours with water and then eaten mixed with skimmed milk. It was generally eaten in Cumberland with barley bread.8 Flummery, occasionally eaten in the north of England, used the husks left after milling oats for oatmeal. These seeds were soaked in water for three days then strained, and the process repeated three times, in order to extract all the mealy particles. The water was left to stand for six or more hours, the sediment then boiled for an hour with continuous stirring and the resulting ‘bla-mange’ eaten with milk. It was ‘an extremely cheap, wholesome, and even delicious food for supper’.9 Pease-kail constituted peas boiled until they were soft and then eaten with milk after straining. Eden also noted the more frequent use of potatoes in the north of England and the variety of ways in which they might be cooked: roasted or boiled and eaten with butter (as in the south) or boiled with a small quantity of meat cut into very small pieces and then made into a hash with pepper, salt and onions (lobscouse). However, Eden notes that one of the constraints on using potatoes throughout the year for most labourers was the inability to store them adequately. It could be done where the soil was light and sandy, as in Cumberland, when a sort of clamp was formed, but, otherwise, even where storage was 5 Eden, State of the poor, 491. 6 Eden, State of the poor, 492. 7 Eden, State of the poor, 497–8. 8 Eden, State of the poor, 499. 9 Eden, State of the poor, 500. 11 Sara Horrell and Deborah Oxley possible, stores tended to have been exhausted by March.10 Even so, the use of the potato as a staple food was spreading throughout the country at this time. On bread, he noted the different types used in the north: barley bread or barley cake was baked (in ovens heated with heath, furze or brushwood) in Cumberland and was deemed highly nutritious as well as having the advantage of keeping for up to five weeks.11 Oaten bread or oatcakes (oats mixed with water and rolled out thinly and sometimes cooked on a griddle or girdle) of various types were also consumed in the Border counties.

Load more